Twenty-First Century Historical Fictions

Over the past two decades, a preponderance of Man Booker Prize winning novels (and even short-listees) have restored to life vanished worlds, suggesting that the appeal of the past persists in contemporary Anglophone fiction. This roundtable seeks to showcase contemporary historical fiction written since 2000 in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. If historical novels represent sites of contested memory or cultural trauma, then which critical junctures do these recent novels depict? Possible areas of exploration might include wartime novels post-Pat Barker, the evolution of neo-Victorianism, the roles of pastiche and parody, the status of historical metafiction, and the new directions taken by novels from the Antipodes.